# Conservatives deserting the Republican Party **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [December 15, 2018, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-deserting-the-republican-party/826168 "2018-12-15T09:14:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-deserting-the-republican-party/826168/61 "2018-12-19T00:39:40Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > I don’t like “neoliberal” because it’s become a snarl term used by the left and the right, and prefer something more along the lines of [just liberal, as in the liberal consensus,](http://www.csuchico.edu/~gwright/1945intro.htm) which broadly dominated American politics until the Civil Rights Movement caused the Republicans to go bugfuck. That twitter user adopts it because it’s a snarl term. He notes that there’s a long history of that sort of re-appropriation. Which is great for a twitter account. Not so much for general usage. The point remains though: there’s a huge ideological territory encompassing the Democrats, but excluding those who reject the scientific consensus on evolution and global warming, while embracing crackpot economic theories. This pro-scientific territory covered both parties prior to 1978: folks like the [Know-nothings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing) existed but were marginalized. ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2018, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-deserting-the-republican-party/826168/62 "2018-12-19T16:22:26Z")
[Two more Kansas Republicans switch parties.](https://www.kansas.com/article223283450.html) > [@](#): > > Sen. Dinah Sykes and Rep. Stephanie Clayton, both moderate Johnson County Republicans, said Wednesday they are becoming Democrats. They join Sen. Barbara Bollier, who left the Republican Party earlier in December. The three lawmakers in Kansas who have switched parties are by no means conservative, so perhaps this post doesn’t belong in this thread. But I think it’s telling that even in Very Red Kansas there are defectors from the right-wing ideology that is dominating the Republican party. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-deserting-the-republican-party/826168/63 "2018-12-20T05:10:02Z")
Here’s CNN’s coverage: [3 Kansas legislators switch from Republican to Democrat | CNN Politics](https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/19/politics/kansas-legislature-republican-democrat/index.html) I can’t remember the last time a state legislator went from red to blue. Far more often than not in recent years it’s been the other way around, unfortunately. ---
**Author:** ![DSYoungEsq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c6cbf5/32.png) [@DSYoungEsq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSYoungEsq)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2018, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-deserting-the-republican-party/826168/64 "2018-12-20T14:21:05Z")
The switches are consistent with the voting patterns we are seeing. Suburbs are increasingly becoming Democratic; rural areas are identifying as Republican, especially in the South, where it has taken this long for some old-line Democrats to accept that their ideology simply isn’t part of the Democratic Party’s views anymore. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2018, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-deserting-the-republican-party/826168/65 "2018-12-22T18:05:00Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > [The Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, Tani Cantil-Sakauye, has renounced her Republican registration](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/chief-justice-california-supreme-court-quits-gop-over-kavanaugh-confirmation-n947911) citing partisan misbehavior by Trump, and by the Senate during the Brett Kavanaugh hearing. > > Kansas State Senator Barbara Bollier has become a Democrat after 43 years as a Republican, citing morality and the GOP’s ‘absurd’ stance on LGBTQ issues. > > Top conservative thinkers who’ve left the GOP and are urging people to vote for Democrats include George Will and Max Boot. > > Steve Schmidt is a top Republican strategist, serving in high White House positions under Bush-Cheney, and as Communications Director of the National Republican Congressional Committee, etc. > Several former Senators and Congressmen have left the GOP recently: David Jolly, Gordon Humphrey, Joe Scarborough, etc. > > Republicans who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 include President G.H.W. Bush, Henry Paulson, Colin Powell, Christine Todd Whitman, John Warner, etc. In addition many, like Gov. John Kasich, voted for a 3rd-party candidate or a write-in. > > One top Republican who’s left the GOP cited Susan Collins’ vote to confirm Kavanaugh as evidence that there’s nothing left in the Party worth salvaging. She is supposedly the beacon of hope for GOP moderation and sanity, yet sacrificed all principles to make a dishonest and fawning speech in support of this misogynist perjuring hyper-partisan judge. > > Why haven’t more thinking Americans left the GOP? Can we retain any respect for those who haven’t? If your thread title said that some liberal Republicans are leaving the party, I would agree. In what universe are the people you mentioned conservative? How are LBGTQ issues and ignoring ICE detainers conservative? How is hatred of Kavanaugh conservative? ---
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2018, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-deserting-the-republican-party/826168/66 "2018-12-22T19:11:13Z")
Over the past 30 years, my views have gone from Moderate Left to Flaming Liberal. Thing is, my views haven’t changed that much. What’s changed is how so-called Conservatives now frame the conversation. It has moved so far to the right, it puts rational, reasonable folks on both sides of the center much further to the left. I view most of the people in **septimus** ’s list as being formerly Moderate Right (Steve Schmidt, David Jolly, e.g.) or just a bit further (Joe Scarborough, George Will, e.g.). But none of them ever swallowed the Bat Shit Crazy Alt Right perspective – which is now characterized as “Conservative.” If John Kasich is the new definition of a “Moderate Conservative,” well, that’s crazy talk. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2018, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-deserting-the-republican-party/826168/67 "2018-12-22T19:46:04Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > If your thread title said that some liberal Republicans are leaving the party, I would agree. In what universe are the people you mentioned conservative? How are LBGTQ issues and ignoring ICE detainers conservative? How is hatred of Kavanaugh conservative? I don’t see an I-am-joking emoticon in your post. Are you claiming that George Will or John Kasich is a “liberal Republican”? George Will - opposes campaign finance reform, - wants to abolish minimum wage, - supports all tax cuts, - opposes Roe v Wade, - published a column about the rise of campus rape allegations that contained sentences like > [@George F. Will](#): > > “They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous … and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate. And academia’s progressivism has rendered it intellectually defenseless now that progressivism’s achievement, the regulatory state, has decided it is academia’s turn to be broken to government’s saddle.” - and yet despite these (“liberal”? 😕) views, _ **now encourages his readers to vote Democratic.** _ ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2018, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-deserting-the-republican-party/826168/68 "2018-12-22T20:10:43Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > If your thread title said that some liberal Republicans are leaving the party, I would agree. In what universe are the people you mentioned conservative? How are LBGTQ issues and ignoring ICE detainers conservative? How is hatred of Kavanaugh conservative? Is that what you think a conservative is? that is just deeply saddening. ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2018, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-deserting-the-republican-party/826168/69 "2018-12-22T20:30:59Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > If your thread title said that some liberal Republicans are leaving the party, I would agree. Three people mentioned in this thread were moderate Republicans from Kansas. Dude, there are NO liberal Republicans in Kansas. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2018, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-deserting-the-republican-party/826168/70 "2018-12-22T22:26:25Z")
> [@Railer13](#): > > Three people mentioned in this thread were moderate Republicans from Kansas. Dude, there are NO liberal Republicans in Kansas. There are no liberal Republicans _anywhere_. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2018, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-deserting-the-republican-party/826168/71 "2018-12-22T23:13:57Z")
Since he is a regular op-ed columnist in the Times, I read David Brooks regularly. He fits into the David Frum mold pretty well and is probably less of a right winger than George Will. As much as he is a never-Trumper, he still does not seem to recognize, for example, that supply-side economics has never worked and likely never will work. He has described himself as a protege of Wm. Buckley. Buckley went to his grave claiming that McCarthy was a great American patriot and Brooks has, AFAIK, never said otherwise. I don’t know how Brooks feels about gay issues, but he is generally a perfect example of the intellectual poverty of the conservative movement. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2018, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-deserting-the-republican-party/826168/72 "2018-12-23T06:40:35Z")
[off-topic] David Brooks is a pretentious, irritating, low-IQ twit. He once wrote an article complaining that Universities hired too few “conservative professors.” (Creationists for the biology department? Climate deniers for geology? Austrian gold bugs for economics?). Uhhh, Brooksie: Teaching is a way of giving to society. Conservatives are takers. Brooks complained when people insulted GWB, the dolt duped into a foolish war. Give Brooks a little credit — he was self-aware enough to recall that during the Clinton years he was unable to write a column without insulting Bill or his wife. Only now, he “realized that was wrong.” On Martin Luther King’s birthday, Brooks wrote a column praising the GOP as the Party of Civil Rights. I read these columns while subscribed to the _New York Times International Edition_. They had a generous “vacation” policy —stop the paper for a week, and an extra week would be tacked on to extend the subscription. I told them I wanted to be on vacation whenever they published a David Brooks column. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2018, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-deserting-the-republican-party/826168/73 "2018-12-23T12:08:13Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > There are no liberal Republicans _anywhere_. The last one died in the [Cincinnati zoo](https://www.audubon.org/magazine/may-june-2014/why-passenger-pigeon-went-extinct), circa 1980. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2018, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-deserting-the-republican-party/826168/74 "2018-12-23T15:57:16Z")
The Republican Party continues to consist of the set of all "true conservatives. It’s just that the circle containing “true conservatives” is getting smaller and smaller and circles a different space than it used to. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2018, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-deserting-the-republican-party/826168/75 "2018-12-23T16:08:05Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > [off-topic] David Brooks is a pretentious, irritating, low-IQ twit. He once wrote an article complaining that Universities hired too few “conservative professors.” (Creationists for the biology department? Climate deniers for geology? Austrian gold bugs for economics?). Uhhh, Brooksie: Teaching is a way of giving to society. Conservatives are takers. > > Brooks complained when people insulted GWB, the dolt duped into a foolish war. Give Brooks a little credit — he was self-aware enough to recall that during the Clinton years he was unable to write a column without insulting Bill or his wife. Only now, he “realized that was wrong.” > > On Martin Luther King’s birthday, Brooks wrote a column praising the GOP as the Party of Civil Rights. I read these columns while subscribed to the _New York Times International Edition_. They had a generous “vacation” policy —stop the paper for a week, and an extra week would be tacked on to extend the subscription. I told them I wanted to be on vacation whenever they published a David Brooks column. Brooks has been writing a series of columns about how we need civility and why the parties should come together. He talks about the faulty ways Republicans look at the world … and never, ever, even once does bigotry and racism and intolerance get mentioned. Never. It’s an astounding high-wire performance. He’s the Philippe Petit of columnists. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conservatives-deserting-the-republican-party/826168.md?page=3)